The Breaking of the Making
by indijo
Summary: His first act of rebellion was his sorting. His final act of rebellion wasn't truly a rebellion at all. Slytherin!Harry, Slash, more than one pairing, different BWL, AU


Full synopsis:

His first act of rebellion was his sorting.

His second act of rebellion was the hair.

His third act of rebellion was the tattoos.

His forth act of rebellion was the piercing.

HIs fifth act of rebellion was running away.

His sixth act of rebellion was the boys.

But his seventh act of rebellion was not really a rebellion at all.

In a world where his parents are alive, and Neville Longbottom is the boy-who-lived. Harry Potter is ordinary. He has two parents who treat all their children equally, a narcissistic sister who hogs the bathroom, an infuriating brother who regularly beats him at Quiddich and several smaller siblings who were born to drive him mad. But for this Harry, it seems ordinary is not enough. And in his quest to define himself as his own person, unique from his siblings, his morals are twisted. The line between good and bad fades, leaving Harry as a crippled warped version of the Gryffindor he was meant to be.

Slytherin!Harry, Sarcastic!Harry, Dark!Harry, Middle-Child Syndrome!Harry, Over-Dramatic!Harry

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Introduction: _Much Ado About Nothing._

The grass was dewy against the soles of his feet and he could feel the dampness seeping through his skin tight jeans, the ones that hung low on his hips. The wash of colour claiming the sky was beautiful, a regular red sky at night moment, yet Harry Potter wasn't looking at the sunset. His hollow gaze was focused down at the hard skin on his heel and the bitten half moon nails at the end of his fingers. When he concentrated his hands didn't shake. They didn't tremble with anger and they didn't itch for freedom. For the trill of a fight to relieve his frustration and to wipe that gloriously stubborn expression off his father's face.

"Time to go." Harry's mother called out the back door. Her red hair laced through with pearly grey and white.

Lily Potter looked delicate, like a porcelain doll. But she wasn't. She'd lived through a war and you could tell. Her strength was there in the firm set of her mouth and the tight up-do she'd woven her hair into for the ball. And it was there in her eyes, in the freckles on her skin. Because Lily Potter had survived. But she had seen so many things that people didn't wish to see. She'd seen the blackness in every soul and felt betrayal from one of her closest friends. And now Harry supposed, this was her way of keeping them all safe.

She wasn't perfect, no matter how hard she tried to pretend she was. Her teeth were slightly crooked. If you hadn't ever studied her face from up close, you wouldn't notice. But they were. And she had a white scar under her left eye, it was jagged and not quite a straight line. Even now that she always worn her hair up, she still couldn't quite get it to stay there. Little tendrils always escaped, like tentacles, Harry thought. And her nose was crooked, half way up there was a dint, and then it went slightly sideways. She had a fiery temper coupled with a quick judgement and her stubborn nature always got her into trouble. And, good god, she was a know-it-all. But she had a kind heart, and she tried to do the best by her children. Harry could see that, he could see it all. But sometimes he just didn't care. This was one of those times.

"Be there in a sec." Harry called, a reply to his mother's warning. Standing up, he moved back towards the house, his strides long and ungainly. He stepped inside the porch and slipped his black boots on, picking up his wallet, keys and wand. The mirror in the hall promptly told him that he didn't look very presentable. He replied that he didn't care and disappeared from it's view before it could offer any more unwelcome suggestions.

His family were gathered in front of the fireplace. A grand thing that scraped the ceiling and was legacy from the Potter patriarchy. The grate was empty, dusty and black. Absently, Harry thought that his family's beautiful dress robes would get dirty. Harry watched as his father's face flushed with age, it transformed James' features from the athletic hansom to something dark and lonely. His eyes crouched bellow dark brown brows and his lips squished into a thin white line.

"Go and get changed." His father's voice was steady and amazingly controlled, but this did not mean that his anger was unnoticeable. It laced the short sentence he spoke and the set of James' jaw told Harry that this argument wouldn't be won.

Upstairs Harry donned the extravagant dress robes that his parents, and apparently the whole of wizarding Britain expected him to wear. The cloak was a deep purple velvet, decadent and disgusting, with gold stitching and a star shaped fastening at the breast. It flared outward quite dramatically and he wore simple, muggle dress trousers and a white shirt underneath. As he slipped back down stairs in his usual lazy gait. He passed that impertinent mirror again. He smiled. The purple clashed beautifully with his green hair.

"Ready Farther?" He questioned when he reached the group, still clustered around the fireplace, but he did not pause. In fact he continued right up to the pot of flu powder resting on a protruding sill fastened to the wall.

Before his farther had a chance to reply he was grasping the pot and flinging the magic powder into the grate, stepping forward purposefully and pronouncing, 'The Ministry'. He tumbled through the flames.

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The ballroom buzzed. A quite thrum of metallic whispers. Gossip flew across the room like wild fire, morphing with each retelling. People glared and bickered and smiled and laughed and roared, whispered, rebuked, called, clucked, and gasped. They were a heavy mass of sound discussing the event of the moment. You could hear if if you listened for a while, the repetition of a name and a family. It appeared that pure blood society had nothing better to do then discuss the whereabouts of the middle Potter. Many theories skitted across the ballroom echoing in the chambers of it's gargantuan ceiling. The most common involved studies into the darkest of all arts, things that people agreed you could not even imagine. Many believe that someone, and they suspected people in the very room, had taken the poor Potter boy under their wing, funded his research and aided his escape. Ready to wield the impressionable, but no doubt talented youth as a means to control the wizarding world. But these theories were just the idle concoctions of bored minds and the reality was so far from these fabrications that it was laughable.

In the corner of this grand hall, stood two boys about 16 or 17 years old. These two boys were like the day and night they were so different. The tallest was handsome and dark skinned, his cheek bones stuck at sheer angles, his deep brown eyes were hooded and wary. The other was pale and haughty, his nose, too straight, separated cold blue eyes and his hair was so blonde it looked almost white. Yet the boys appeared to be companions. Together they skulked behind a pillar, peering from the shadows at the women the called their mothers.

"Took you long enough!" Snarled the blonde one. His lips thin and smirking. Not turning from his dogged evaluation of a skinny blonde woman. She was currently talking to a girl about his age with a small, pug-like face and her pretty curly brown hair in two bunches. The blonde woman was as thin lipped and haughty as the boy watching her, but with striking blue eyes and a delicate grace.

Blaise didn't reply, he knew Malfoy didn't really need one, instead he reached into the pockets of his robes and retrieved a deck of cards and tiny silk bag. He opened the silk bag and stuck his had inside, making odd reaching motions. Apparently unable to find what he wanted, he tipped the bag upside down, exposing the initials B.Z. printed in silver on the bottom. Three things fell out; a small sneak-o-scope, it buzzed faintly but Blaise ignored it because considering where they were it was kind of useless, a small silvery knife that when dropped stayed suspended on the tip and a chess set. Picking up the two items he didn't need and shoving them back into the bag, he pulled the string shut and shoved it back in his pocket.

"Nice enchanted dagger." Draco muttered absent mindedly, having turned his attention back to his companion on hearing the clang on the board hitting the floor. He bent down flipped it the right way up and pulled his own small bag out of a pocket. This bag was clear, showing the tiny chess pieces inside it. He tipped them onto the board. By the time they hit the wood, they'd all reached their original size and were settle impatiently waiting to play.

"You ready?" He snarled. "I'm going to win this one. Watch me."

Blaise just laughed and moved his first piece, "Pawn to E4." Poking the piece to get it's attention. The little white pawn squeaked a hurried 'yessir' and moved forward two places.

"Your Turn." He prompted Malfoy, who had turned his head to again watch his mother.

"Oh. Right." He glanced back to the board, analysed Zabini's move and ordered, "Pawn to E5." Unlike Blaise's, Malfoy's pawn just turned and tutted before moving the ordered two spaces. Zabini's grin didn't waver. Malfoy frowned at the cheek.

"So what took you so long anyway?" Malfoy questioned as Blaise considered his next move.

"My mother," He paused to smile sardonically at the boy opposite him, "She wanted to introduce me to her newest squeeze. Knight to F3. Some jargon about meeting the guys niece, I heard she looks like a horse."

Malfoy gave a bark of a laugh and glanced up at Blaise's squinty-eyed scowl before considering the board again. "Well my mother's being just as bad, she's trying to get Pansy and I declared 'official'." He sighed, "Pansy just loves the idea."

"I bet she does." Blaise replied winking.

The furrow in Draco's brow deepened. "Knight to C6." 'Idiot!' the knight exclaimed but he moved and that was all that mattered.

"So, you know everyone's talking about the Potter." Malfoy stated, looking Blaise in the eyes. He seriously wondered if the Zabini legacy knew anything, he was probably closest to the 3rd Potter, but with Harry that didn't exactly mean anything.

"Yes." Was all he said, short and sweet and clearly furious.

"Know anything?" He couldn't help it.

"Bishop to C4. And no, Nothing. No more than the rumours." He snapped.

Blaise's features were drawn up tighter than McGonagall's hair, Draco wondered why, He hadn't thought that the boys were that close. But the Zabini's did love to gossip, maybe that was it.

"Well, I know it's not the dark arts thing they're going on about, there's no way Harry would get involved in that." He smiled slightly, "He _is_ still a potter no matter what he tries to convince himself."

Malfoy smirked, Potters were Potters were Potters, through and through.

"I don't know anything about where he disappeared to but he mentioned the whole picking up and leaving thing. Just didn't say that he actually had a plan. Looks like it worked though doesn't-" Blaise's sentence was cut off as the doors swung inwards hitting the marble walls either side with a bang. Both boys jumped to their feet, fingers clutched tightly at their wands they lurched round the pillar they'd hidden behind and stopped dead in their tracks.

Their chess game lay forgotten.

--

When the doors of the ballroom snapped upon with a resounding crash, all eyes turned to take in Harry James Potter. He stood tall the luminous green spikes on his head pointed straight upwards. The tattoos on his face were the only movement in the cavernous hall.

"I am back." He called, voice level but all the more scary because of it. He raised his wand slightly, the purple cloak billowing behind him on an unseen wind and captured the attention of everyone in that hall. The shadows from the torches behind him covered half his his face distorting it with flares of light whilst the tattoo upon his cheek slithered, grotesque in it's movement.

Later people swore his eyes echoed with madness and others would claim that they'd glowed a brilliant red. In fact two freckled twins would go so far as to say that he'd actually burned several people alive with the force of his gaze. But most people did not tell of anything but their terror. People whispered and stuttered and croaked about his presence. As he had stood in the doorway for those seconds, when he had spoken those words, many feared, for a moment, that the person who was back was not the third eldest potter, but someone else entirely. In that moment, where many hearts skipped beats and breaths were sucked back through teeth, where women fainted and men choked back cries of horror, almost the entire population of the ballroom believed that it was he-who-must-not-be-named standing, framed by a darkness warped in the light of the torches.

And then they blinked, took in his appearance, glared at the green eyes his mother had bestowed him, and he opened his mouth again,

"Are you happy now?" Realisation gripped them, this was not the Dark Lord reincarnated, but just a petulant child, scorned by his own average nature.

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End file.
